Special Needs Cutback Claim Challenged at County Council

March 3, 2010

KILDARE – County Councillors have voted to condemn anticipated cutbacks in special needs assistants (SNAs) for the county’s school following a trade union estimate that a hundred such positions could be lost in the county.

However, last Monday’s Kildare County Council meeting heard from Fianna Fáil Cllr. Paul Kelly that the figures were not based on fact and that the amount spent on SNAs nationally was one of the few areas not to have cuts this year but was increasing to n330m this year.

He said there was no basis for the SIPTU trde union claim that there will 1,200 redundancies nationally among SNAs and there would be a review at the end of March.

Non-party Cllr. Padraig McEvoy launched a debate on national plans to drop 1,200 of the SNAs who are seen as vital to help children with special needs keep up with their peers in school.

He said the county has 25,612 children in 106 primary schools and there was anger at the cuts in a county which had higher than usual class sizes.

Figures given to Kildare North TD, Emmet Stagg recently showed that in the 2008/2009 school year 23% of primary school pupils in primary schools in county Kildare were being taught in classes of 30 or more and that 51% of pupils were being taught in classes ranging from 25 to 29 pupils.

The Labour TD later said the situation was worse in the main towns in north Kildare.

Cllr. McEvoy said that nationally 1,200 of 6,000 SNAs were being made redundant.

He also said there was concern that needs were not being assessed correctly.

Non-party Cllr. Paddy Kennedy said mainstream schools will be reluctant to enrol students with special needs.

Cllr. Catherine Murphy said many SNAs had undertaken courses themselves and now we would be seeing them being on the dole rather than in the classroom.

Parents of children with special needs have become permanent lobbyists and she said she was shocked to learn that the Government has spent n20 million on legal fees to fight parents of children with special needs in the court in the previous three years.

If you intervene early it will cost a lot less later, she said.
Fianna Fáil Cllr. Paul Kelly challenged some of the views.

He said SNAs were assigned to students not to schools and that the spending on them was rising by n30 million this year to n330m.
Cllr. Kelly said some schools had retained SNAs where the need for them had passed and there was no change in the criteria being used to assess needs. Surplus SNAs were being withdrawn, he said.

Former school principal, Fine Gael Cllr. Senan Griffin, said there was a danger children with special needs could be increasingly excluded.
Cllr. Darren Scully said we would spend n47,000 million on NAMA and health and education would suffer.

Labour Cllr. Mark Wall said any SNA cuts would turn out "anything but cheap."

Cllr. Fiona O’Loughlin said mainstream school was not the answer for every special needs student. "We are getting over emotive," she said.
Cllr. John McGinley proposed the Council condemn any SNA cutbacks and this was agreed on the Council where Government opposition have the majority.